I wrote the first Corona Check-in (aka Life in the Trenches) on here exactly two weeks ago but it feels like at least 3 years [note: this ended up being posted a few days after the previous sentence was written]. At the time it felt weird that there were less people in the office than normal and that the streets were a little more empty than usual. Later it was strange that restaurants were allowed to be open but only for limited hours. Now, as anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the last month knows (or those living in the "Big Brother" house who allegedly continue to be cut off from the outside world and therefore have no idea what's going on), things have, to put it lightly, escalated. We're down to essential services in basically all of the modern world and many of us are in various states of lock-down. In France, breaking the lock-down rules results in a fine of a few hundred Euros for the first offence, and then quickly climbs up to six months in prison for a second (and if you think carefully about what prisons are like especially right now, you really don't want to be going to one). India's 1.3 billion people have been put into lock-down as of the other day, with the governors of some states giving orders to "shoot on sight" any offenders. Here in Germany, things are less draconian for now, but I continue to see people not taking it very seriously (e.g. walking to the grocery store -- which is of course allowed -- I saw a big group of runners out together... come on people...) and I think that will lead to more forceful restrictions in due course.
I continue to put my very best effort in for working from home, but to be honest it's all but impossible. There are some positive things coming out of this, uhh... "incident", however. For one, there is a lot of funny Twitter and Instagram content coming out. I'm especially impressed by the sarcastic and self-deprecating parents trying to make light of surviving this thing with their kids at home. Some really funny people out there on the Internet.
What a weird existence.
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